Awakening manifests through the application of mindfulness to four areas: body, feelings, mind, and dharmas. Buddhists of all the traditions share this principle found in the Satipatthana Sutta, which has been expounded upon since the time of the Buddha himself. Rodney Smith challenges us to hold this teaching up against our own experience, and in doing so to discover the inherent interconnection of all Four Foundations. They are revealed to be a sequential path leading the practitioner from the world of form to the joyous perception of the formless. The Four Foundations of Mindfulness thus serve as a road map for any genuine spiritual path.

Touching the Infinite: A New Perspective on the Buddhas Four Foundations of Mindfulness, Rodney Smith, Shambhala Publications, Paperback, 269 Pages, 2017, $16.95

Ben Connelly is a Soto Zen priest and Dharma heir to the Katagiri lineage. He teaches at Minnesota Zen Meditation Center. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is the author of Inside the Grass Hut: Living Shitou's Classic Zen Poem.

Forward by Norman Fischer

vii

Introduction

1

"Thirty Verses on Consciousness Only"

19

1. Self and Other

25

2. The Eight-Consciousnesses Model

31

3. Store Consciousness

37

4. Aspects of the Buddhist Unconscious

49

5. Mind Makes Self and Other

57

6. Stuck on the Self

63

7. Seeing Through I, Me, and Mine

69

8. The All

73

9. Mindfulness of Phenomena

79

10. Five Aggregates, Five Universal Factors

83

11. Cultivating Seeds of Goodness

89

12. Being with Suffering

95

13. Taking Care of Suffering

101

14. Not Always So

105

15. The Water and the Waves

109

16. On Thinking

115

17. Projection Only

121

18. The Process of Consciousness

127

19. The Ripening of Karma

131

20. Three Natures

137

21. Dependence and Realization

143

22. The Harmony of Difference and Sameness

151

23. No Own Nature

155

24. Three Natures, All Without Self

163

25. Four Ways to Express the Inexpressible

167

26. How We Are Bound

173

27. Thinking About It Is Not Enough

177

28. Being At Rest

181

29. Transformation At the Root of Suffering

187

30. The Blissful Body of Liberation

191

Epilogue: Meditation and Compassionate Action, and the "Thirty Verses"